


A Shuffle of Cards

by Domimagetrix



Series: Gentili e Sculacciati [8]
Category: Runescape
Genre: Addiction, Adult Language, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Implied mental illness, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Sexual Content, Mobster AU, Mobsters, Organized Crime, Other, Suicidal Ideation, Surgical Transition References, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, manipulative relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 03:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: A few glimpses into the goings-on in San Tristen.





	A Shuffle of Cards

He’d done it again.

Bone-weary, aching, Pict had polished off half a bottle of middling-quality rum in lieu of food and quieted the jangling alarm of self-destruction in his head. The call was done, the need communicated.  
  
Sliske had answered. Negotiation had been brief, and the sound of disconnection clicking in his ear accompanied the mental image of a cotton-lined steel door slamming shut. Gentle but absolute.  
  
_He’s going to kill me. Too old for this shit._

It was worse than being fresh into adulthood and discovering it all for the first time. At least he hadn’t been strung out as he was now, feeling the threads of addiction reassert themselves and pull as soon as Sliske drew back and left him to fend for himself again. The collar he wore and the leash occasionally attached to it were formalities at this point.  
  
_Fuck it. Kill me, Sliske. I don’t care._  
  
He flopped backward on the bed, assuming the twenty-minute drive between the casino and his own shabby apartment permitted a few minutes' time to regret the call. Phoning Sliske and arranging yet another punishing round of… whatever this was.  
  
He was wrong.  
  
Shadows coiled and spun next to the bed, constricting in a silhouette that bled into Sliske's form as the nimble little vines retreated. Pict began to sit up. Sliske was having none of it, pouncing immediately on the bed and clamping hands over the layers of bruising on Pict’s wrists. The Mahjarrat’s jacket swung open and revealed neither vest nor shirt beneath.  
  
Bright amber eyes met one blue one. "Tell me 'no,' Pict."  
  
Pict opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, cloudy-headed and confused. Would telling him “no” be a refusal to tell him…? he couldn’t remember.  
  
Sliske didn't wait, but seemed to recognize the conflicted expression for what it was. He chuckled, arms bending until his lips brushed the smaller man’s as he spoke. "Or tell me 'yes,' Pict."  
  
_Yes._ Yes, he needed him, wanted him, wanted what he was offering.  
  
He also wanted more. His cruelty. To speak and be denied whatever it was he said. He wanted what Sliske had suggested over the phone, the risk, the possibility.  
  
He wanted his answer to be ignored.  
  
"No."  
  
Sliske’s teeth, a predator's arsenal that dazzled even in low lamplight, promised everything in the wider smile. "Too bad. World Guardians are my province, Pict, but you are mine in a way the others aren’t." He nuzzled Pict’s hair from his ear. “And one of the ones I need to ensure everything remains locked… in… place.”

  


………..

  


Razwan turned beneath the cover, careful not to disturb the arm settled underneath her pillow. She rested her head against the pale chest to which the arm was attached and listened to the Wanderer murmur disjointedly in his sleep over the sound of his own heartbeat.

“Safe here. Safe from… so tired of dying.” His head turned, and Razwan looked up at him.

She blinked. For a moment, it’d seemed as though the blue of his eyes had been echoed in a vapor trail escaping closed eyelids. She scooted carefully upward to get a closer look, but whatever it’d been, it was gone now. A waking mirage, maybe. A brief opening of his eye and her own sleep-blurry vision conspiring together to make something even more of his already startling eye color.

“She doesn’t know. She’s going to face him again and I won’t be in there this time.”

An urge Razwan didn’t understand drew her hand up to the side of his face. She whispered. “Who?”

“The barbarian. _Anima sanitatis.”_ He pressed his cheek to her hand. “It’s dulled here, but it isn’t gone. Your soul. Fragments and anchors. You’re tied through me.”

His eyes opened and Razwan cringed, expecting… something. For the man to realize he’d been speaking too freely and for the suspicion to renew itself. Accusations. The return of the vapor trail.

Instead, the Wanderer’s other arm wound around her and held her almost too tightly. “You fought for me and won.” He shuddered. “Too many, but I know you.”

 _Souls._ She wondered at it. _He doesn’t strike me as religious?_

Still feeling as though he balanced on some precarious edge of consciousness, Razwan pressed. She had to know.

“What’s your name?”

The Wanderer turned, still pressing her against his chest, and spoke into her hair. “I don’t know. I know yours. Hers. I know his.”

“His? Pict?”

“Oreb.”

  


………..

  


Zamorak stumbled, slapping a hand to the wall next to him as the world tilted and swayed.

Hands reached to his shoulder and side, and the mother of all mother hens fretted behind him. “My Lord, you can’t… you need water, sir. You’ve had enough beer for two people twice your size.”

The former god slid fingers through his auburn hair, leaning back against the wall and eyeing the tidy man who’d attempted to steer him. “Y’know what has water in it, Bilrach old boy? Beer!” He hiccuped. “Let’s go get some.”

Bilrach looked up at the dazzling pearly whites set in Zamorak’s grin and thought fondly of the paperwork in his office. Paperwork was always paperwork. It sat neatly in “to-do” bins and “completed” bins. It did not emerge from his office periodically to rediscover the unique pleasures of alcohol and chocolate in excess. He’d never held paperwork’s hair while it vomited into a toilet and swore off vices “for good,” that “for good” generally amounting to two weeks’ worth of peace.

The Shift itself hadn't broken Bilrach, but a human Zamorak might.

The only one capable of talking sense into an inebriated Zamorak was Razwan, and where was she now? Off pursuing her own favorite recreational activities in Sliske’s establishment while Daquarius sank deeper into delirium below Diavolo’s main office. Helpful as she always was.

The voices in his own head clamored louder day by day, too. He hadn’t the heart to add to Zamorak’s troubles and kept his private worries to himself. There was still time, and officework never failed to deliver a distraction. He would continue putting up the brave front so long as legal jargon went on keeping the worst at bay.

“No more beer, my Lord.” Bilrach carefully navigated his charge toward a couch in the adjacent room. “Rest is the order of the hour. To bed with you.”

Moia’s voice interrupted him. “Daquarius has spoken coherently again. It wasn’t long, but some of the information… is he _drunk?”_

Nodding, Bilrach helped a happily muttering Zamorak to the couch and tossed a blanket over him, turning back to Moia. “What news?”

Her lips thinned to a hard line. “Honeycomb isn’t going to be enough. We need the World Guardians if we’re ever going to go back.”

“All of them?” Bilrach stilled, appalled. “Hundreds-”

Moia shook her head. “No, not all of them. We need the divergent ones. They’re the reason so many memories are fractured. Most of them followed a fairly similar string of events, but a few… didn’t. We need them. Daquarius called them ‘anchors.’”

  


……….

  


Wahisietel reclined in a beaten, understuffed chair. He wormed his fingers beneath the pads of his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose and entertaining the thought of an early whiskey.

_The one’s a mess, and the other two are worse._

All three drank like fish. He was hardly one to throw stones when it came to booze, but he also hadn’t turned himself into a laundry list of health problems in addition to it. One was constantly testing herself to near-destruction in bare-knuckle brawls, dancing a perpetual razor’s edge in temperament. Another was playing a very dangerous spy’s game, and if Sliske didn’t know where her loyalties were now, it wouldn’t be long before he did. She also amused herself by sleeping with the most dangerous people she could find.

The one Razwan had brought in…

_That one’s a fucking disaster through and through._

He’d seen the telltale surgical scars, their marks subtle and tidy with the care of someone well-versed in what they were doing. Though Wise-Tail’s ties to the medical community were tenuous at best since retiring, he kept himself updated on newer advancements in medicine, and the cost of Pict’s transition hadn’t been negligible.

Some who were well-off maintained their privacy through the appearance of the working class - he’d met a few such individuals during his service and after - but that couldn’t be the case with the diminutive man who’d occupied his couch and spare bedroom during his stay.

Something was off. The procedures were expensive, but his overall health bespoke too many years without the influence of a doctor and long periods of malnutrition. The examination he’d given Pict told the tale of a man whose interest in his own state of health was laughable at best. Most of his caloric intake had to have been liquid.

The man also worked for Sliske. He suspected there was more to his brother’s operations than gambling and exotica, but this seemed outside the realm even for him.

_Or is it?_

Wahisietel eyed the phone he’d so recently replaced in its brass-lined cradle and wondered. Pict was an anchor. So were Razwan and Finley, although whether Sliske knew about that last was in question. He had two of them in his employ and proximity, even if one ultimately served Zamorak’s interests. Sliske’s acquisition - _re_ acquisition - of Nomad complicated things at the very least. Perhaps it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that his brother had either arranged or influenced Pict’s situation so he’d find himself in Sliske’s clutches again.

Another major player had been introduced, too. _He_ was also a part of this. _He_ was an unknown quantity in Wahisietel’s experience; even his diluted and somewhat kaleidoscopic memories bore nothing of consequence when it came to _him._

Wahi’s fondness for unknown quantities was limited to the study of history. Present-day unknowns were collectively invited to fuck off.

 _Perhaps it’s time the three of them met. Better under my damned roof than Sliske’s. Or_ his.

He stared at the phone.

“What the hell game are you playing at, Sliske?”

  


……….

  


_This is it, Bug. This is your day! Gonna go right up to her and-_

“BUG!”

He cringed a little at Ahrim’s voice before straightening, running a hand down the front of his jacket and trotting over to the security guard. Pouring a little of his precious reserve of confidence into his voice, he looked up at the gaunt man and smiled. “What’cha do’fer, Ahrim?”

Thin eyebrows furrowed at a severe angle as Ahrim grimaced. “Speak clearly. I don’t have time to decipher that nonsense you spew.”

“Sorry, sorry!” The squat little man blinked up at the taller. “What do you need me fer?”

Ahrim’s lips thinned. “That will do, I suppose.” He pointed to a patron leaning drunkenly against the doorjamb leading to the stairwell. “One of our, ah… _guests_ has overindulged and requires an escort out. Please see to him.”

Bug eyed the fellow at the other end of Ahrim’s gaze, noting the inebriated man’s conversational partner was doing well given it was a potted plant. “But I don’t usually deal with the upstairs folk. ‘Em’s drink in privacy up there. Maybe he’s out ordering a fresh bottle? It’d be awful if I was disturbin’ him.”

The security guard sighed thinly next to him. “Were your speech habits less reprehensible, you’d be a pillar of respectability in your innocence. Nevertheless, he’s a potential problem. Please lead him to the front and ensure he either hails a cab or heads home by foot.”

Bug’s shoulders drooped and he nodded. “Righto, I’ll see ‘im out.”

As he made his way across the floor to the potential problem chatting amicably to the fern next to him, Bug wondered at Ahrim’s words, marking them for a compliment after a cursory reexamination. His thoughts then turned elsewhere, aimed at the Gray Ring’s most recent hire and the hiring manager’s own personal assistant. He’d need a good night’s rest and another hour’s self-motivation in front of the mirror to work his courage back up and make his move.

_Tomorrow is your day, Bug! Gonna go right up to her and…_

  


……….

  


Sliske stood by the window, staring down at the street outside and smiling to himself. Raindrops weaving their way down the glass cast his face in rills of shadow.

_A new world, and a history to be rewritten by one who knows a bit about writing. What say you, Raven King? Surely you’ve no more desire to meet your likely fate than I do. What say you?_


End file.
